Monthly Archives: March 2016

Different, therefore the same

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This guest post is by Megan Carlson. You can read a bit about her on the “Denizens” page.

When I was ten years old, a friend’s mom said—to my face—that she felt sorry for me because of how hard my mom worked. She was “worried about how I would turn out.” My mom, a graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School and entering into a field, at that time, heavily dominated by men, was somehow an unfit role model for her daughter in the southern eyes of women in our community.

My parents, though, carried on in discarding gender roles. My dad had me in the lab with him on Saturdays running “experiments” at the age of six, and my mom decided to keep being a great physician despite the questioning looks and muttered concerns. However, in spite of their great efforts in molding a daughter who was fearless, I still had issues with confidence and self-doubt, something that was invisible to most. Luckily, my professors at Auburn and Clemson saw the weight of my insecurity bearing down on me, and day by day they chipped away at it until I discovered what it felt like to move freely. Continue reading →

What’s love got to do with it: whispering into the gale of “transhumanism”

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Colors_620wThere are so many TED talks that inspire and amaze me, I forget that the “T” stands for “technology.” I am no luddite, but this conversation has me spooked. Martine Rothblatt founded Sirius XM and generally has a Midas touch with business. As the highest paid CEO in the country, s/he’s also an articulate spokesperson for gender fluidity, having embraced her female identity at age 40 while remaining married to her soulmate for over 30 years. Her story includes a heartstrings-tugging foray into the pharmaceutical industry. Determined to help their daughter survive a fatal diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension, Rothblatt bought a drug patent from Glaxo and set up manufacture herself.

One thing led to another and now s/he and her wife are working with genetic scientists to alter the DNA of pigs, so they can “grow” human lungs for transplant. This is straight out of Margaret Atwood’s Maddadam Trilogy, except Atwood’s animals were “pigoons,” crosses of pigs with baboons. It’s so similar, I do wonder who got the idea from whom. Rothblatt also has a foundation that researches the uploading of human consciousness into computers, and implanting the data into robots that can “learn.” S/he and her wife plan to be cryogenically frozen together. S/he calls herself a “transhumanist.” In the vein of Ray Kurzweil and Singularity, these people are after nothing short of human immortality through technology. Continue reading →

On racism, white supremacy and admitting that we need each other

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Tree_620wLast, night, I joined in a conversation at my son’s Quaker school about Ta’Nehisi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me. It was a fairly diverse crowd—ethnically, if not economically. Everyone there was well educated, thoughtful and, with one honest exception, liberal. I was especially thankful for the opportunity to listen to two black intellectuals and a Quaker elder who lived in Detroit during the 1967 riots.

We worked our way through various responses to the book, including praise for Coates’ use of the dream as metaphor, which I wrote about here. I appreciated hearing new (to me) ideas from folks I don’t usually encounter. A black man who teaches high school history pointed out that one of the horrors of slavery was not that white people thought black people weren’t human. It’s that they knew how human they were, and were able to manipulate the relationship to get what they wanted from them—their labor and obedience. Continue reading →

The redemptive power of “Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist”

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3.6.16_Leopard2Sunil Yapa’s novel has a strong structure: a ensemble cast—seven different points of view plus a narrator’s voice–weaving around an actual event with vivid details that rise to the level of mythic symbolism. A billy club stands for the brutality of all authority wielded in violence; a police horse evokes intelligence beyond the petty human; a facial scar suggests menace or heroism; the misty rain sets a theatrical atmosphere. Details like PVC pipe, apple cider vinegar-soaked pink bandanas, swim goggles, and a riot helmet reflecting clouds passing overhead work together in an ominous concert of impending doom.

The story at times feels like passages of the Mahabarata, Greek myths of fathers and sons, Shakespearean drama of mistaken identity, or the Bible’s story of the Prodigal son returning. Perennial activist John Henry is a Moses character, bringing his people to freedom through the desert. Even the simple mention of stores at an intersection—the Gap, Banana Republic, a bank—takes on an End-of Empire feel. Yes, they are actual stores, but they also stand for something far greater, beyond any one individual. They are part of a vast capitalist network of exploitation of material resources and people’s lives and livelihoods. Continue reading →